tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17925041352588784752018-03-06T12:32:04.706+01:00IfcOpenShellopen source ifc implementation and geometry enginethomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-6252127508214276352015-10-07T20:00:00.000+02:002015-10-08T10:02:05.374+02:00Separating elements by their material layersAn advantage that IfcOpenShell has over the many mesh-based viewers is that it is backed by a powerful modelling kernel called Open Cascade. This has already proven its significance for example in the ease of creating 2d floor plans from 3d elements in the <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2015/07/creating-2d-svg-floor-plans-from-ifc.html">SVG exporter</a>. Now, a new feature in IfcOpenShell is introduced, once again demonstrating IfcOpenShell as a forerunner in terms of accurate and advanced visualisation of IFC geometry.<br /><br />As building professionals readily know, building elements such as walls and slabs can be built up using several layers, for example including brick, thermal insulation and an air gap. This information is typically represented in IFC using an IfcMaterialLayerSet, which describes the thickness of such layers relatively to the axis of the wall. Therefore, it is not a direct part of the geometric representation of the element and therefore not visible in most IFC viewers. Alternatively, IFC exporters can choose to decompose the wall element into several IfcBuildingElementParts describing every of such layers as a separate product.<br /><br />IfcOpenShell now introduces the possibility to separate the body representation according to its layers, with the appropriate style information applied. Furthermore, topological information that describes how wall end points connect to one another is used to fold such layers around corners where connecting walls meet. To our knowledge this is functionality that is currently not offered in any other IFC viewer, let me know if otherwise.<br /><br />Currently this feature is in extended testing and is available in <a href="https://github.com/aothms/IfcOpenShell/tree/layerset_slicing">a development branch</a>. It will be part of the upcoming new build once testing is complete. Note that it is potentially a time intensive operation and hence will have to be enable with the flag --enable-layerset-slicing in the IfcConvert utility.<br /><br /><div style="font-size: 80%; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qid7eUEDhuo/VhVgVNdYI-I/AAAAAAAAARM/iJzWwRyYlj8/s1600/ifcmateriallayersets.jpg" /><br/>Visuals rendered using IfcBlender of the <a href="http://www.nibs.org/?page=bsa_commonbimfiles#project1">Duplex&nbsp;apartment&nbsp;building</a> model by <abbr title="Engineer Research and Development Center, U.S Army, Corps of Engineers">USACE ERDC</abbr> and buildingSMART Alliance. 1. A view from the outside with one window removed. 2. An exploded view of the lower level walls showcasing how layers are folded based on topological connectivity with other walls. 3. An image for contrast from a common IFC viewer with only a single surface style per product. </div>. thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-10168040062983910612015-07-26T16:00:00.000+02:002015-07-30T11:35:35.036+02:00Creating 2d SVG floor plans from IFC files<div style="float: right; margin-left: 20px; width: 200px; font-size: 60%; text-align: center"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-is8cvwJzjxI/VbTuPmq_zLI/AAAAAAAAAPU/kbjd20SiseU/s1600/clinic-svg.png" style="float: right; height: auto;width: 200px; margin-bottom:10px" /><br>SVG floor plans extracted from the <a href="http://www.nibs.org/?page=bsa_commonbimfiles#project3">Medical&nbsp;Clinic</a> model by <abbr title="Engineer Research and Development Center, U.S Army, Corps of Engineers">USACE ERDC</abbr> and buildingSMART Alliance</div>IfcConvert converts IFC files into a variety of output formats. Most of you will know these formats include geometrical models, either tessellated and easy to understand for importing applications, such as Wavefront OBJ and Collada, or Boundary Representation models in STEP or IGES with support for curved surfaces. Some of you might know the 0.5.0 branch also features an XML output format that contains a decomposition tree and property data of the building elements.<br /><br />In collaboration with <a href="http://www.root-bv.nl/">ROOT B.V.</a> a new two-dimensional geometrical output format is added, called SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). In order to turn the three-dimensional IFC model into 2d floor plans, the model is sliced at horizontal cross-sections. ROOT B.V. uses this format for their web-based tool <a href="https://www.flatt.io/">flatt.</a>, an online facility management platform that aggregates sources of additional information into a two-dimensional overview. The development of the SVG conversion has been executed by <a href="http://aecgeeks.com/">AECgeeks</a>, a consultancy company founded by one of the main contributors to IfcOpenShell. Both companies are strongly committed to free open source software, so we are happy to see that these developments are merged back into IfcOpenShell for the greater public good.<br /><br />The SVG output format of IfcConvert is integrated into the public <a href="https://svn.code.sf.net/p/ifcopenshell/svn/trunk/src/ifcconvert">IfcOpenShell source code</a> as of today. The image on the right does not show the direct output of IfcConvert, the isometric projection is added in a vector graphics manipulation tool.<br /><br /><span id="goog_1161128431"></span><span id="goog_1161128432"></span><br />thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-54620512616782251252015-02-26T20:00:00.000+01:002015-02-26T20:26:33.040+01:00Two new IfcOpenShell releasesIt has been a long wait since the previous official IfcOpenShell release. But now, two releases are presented at once, to make up for testing the patience of the community to this extent. On the one hand the new 0.4 release candidate improves on the stability of the 0.4 branch. The 0.5 preview release features more bleeding-edge work. Both releases have been updated for changes in upstream projects and include builds for the new <a href="http://www.blender.org/">blender 2.73</a> and 3ds Max 2015 and are built using Open Cascade 6.7.1 (<a href="https://github.com/tpaviot/oce">OCE</a> 0.16).<br /><br />Both releases can be downloaded from the <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">ifcopenshell.org</a> website. As always, it includes <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">IfcBlender</a>, <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html">IfcMax</a> and <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcconvert.html">IfcConvert</a>. The 0.5 release now introduces <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/python.html">ifcopenshell-python</a>, a Python module for parsing and writing IFC files and creating BReps and explicit triangulated geometry from the implicit IFC geometry. The <a href="https://github.com/opensourceBIM/IfcOpenShell-BIMserver-plugin">BIMserver plug-in</a> has been provided with updated executables for its geometry interpretation.<br /><br /><h3>The 0.4 release</h3>An excerpt of the improvements is provided below:<br /><ul><li>More faithful use of precision information in IFC</li><li>Fixes and improvements for IfcLShapeProfileDef, IfcCShapeProfileDef, IfcRectangleHollowProfileDef, IfcCartesianTransformOperator3D, IfcSpecularExponent, IfcFacetedBrep, IfcPolyline, IfcPolyLoop</li><li>Prevent errors in triangulations due to zero-length normals</li><li>Fixes for parsing files with comments</li><li>Write unique IDs in Collada files</li><li>Speed up output of Wavefront OBJ files</li><li>Less unnecessary nurbs conversion in the STEP and IGES output</li><li>Check the validity of solids and fillets</li><li>Make parsing and serialization locale-independent</li></ul><br /><h3>The 0.5 preview release</h3>Simultaneously, a large amount of improvements and new features have been added to the 0.5 branch, which we do not want to withhold from the community. Hence, a preview of the 0.5 branch is released for adventurous users. Most notably, it contains all the improvements to geometry handling as outlined in <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2014/05/updates-on-geometry.html">this post</a> and a brand new Python interface and coupling with <a href="http://www.pythonocc.org/">pythonOCC</a>. The Python interface has been built in collaboration with the FreeCAD team and its users, which are about to release a <a href="http://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog.php?2015=22">new version</a> that includes a very promising full blown IFC importer and exporter. For programmers a new API is introduced that supersedes the IfcGeomObjects API. A new output format is added to <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcconvert.html">IfcConvert</a> which provides textual output from the IFC file that describes the header, decomposition structure and property values in XML format.<br /><br /><h3>Introducing <a href="http://academy.ifcopenshell.org/">IfcOpenShell Academy</a></h3>With the introduction of the Python interface to IfcOpenShell and the integration with <a href="http://www.pythonocc.org/">pythonOCC</a>, IfcOpenShell becomes even more suitable as a platform for academia, research and rapid development. With Python+IfcOpenShell+pythonOCC+Qt a complete framework is presented to interactively and visually present, analyse and construct IFC data. <a href="http://academy.ifcopenshell.org/">IfcOpenShell Academy</a> provides an overview of quick recipes or building blocks to accomplish common tasks related to IFC. If you wish to contribute a recipe to the cookbook contact <a href="mailto:thomas@ifcopenshell.org">thomas@ifcopenshell.org</a>.<br /><br />Enjoy! And remember that <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2011/08/ifcopenshell-needs-your-help.html">IfcOpenShell still needs your help</a>! thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-66054874464937393252014-12-19T12:00:00.000+01:002014-12-19T14:00:35.269+01:00Combining IfcOpenShell and pythonOCCOne of the strengths of the IfcOpenShell library is the vast amount of shape analysis and healing tools that Open Cascade provides. This allows for transforming, validating, generating and analysing geometry in IFC files, for example, to compute missing IfcProperty values, validate geometrical constraints, implement clash- and interference checking and the generation of new geometry.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.pythonocc.org/">pythonOCC</a> exposes the rich set of functionality that Open Cascade provides to a Python environment, which allows for intuitive rapid prototyping. Since IfcOpenShell also provides a Python wrapper, the two of them can be easility tied together to create a development environment for working with geometry in IFC files in an interactive, quick, but also, very powerful way.<br /><br />To demonstrate the possibilities, or rather, the first baby steps towards a more interesting and meaningful demonstration, I put together a quick example here: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/pythonOCC/example1/">http://ifcopenshell.org/pythonOCC/example1/</a>. The set of dependencies to get the system running is long, but it is worth it!<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NxyLL0KuLko/VJQgpffGPBI/AAAAAAAAAM4/JS6z3E3NqvU/s1600/IfcOpenShell-pythonOCC.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NxyLL0KuLko/VJQgpffGPBI/AAAAAAAAAM4/JS6z3E3NqvU/s1600/IfcOpenShell-pythonOCC.png" /></a></div>thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-11069320908770241452014-05-06T17:48:00.000+02:002014-05-06T17:48:17.592+02:00Updates on GeometryPrimarily IfcOpenShell focusses on the geometrical content of IFC files. This post provides an overview of some of the recent accomplishments related to our core business of processing IFC geometry.<br /><br /><b>Parametric profile definitions</b><br />IfcOpenShell already supported most parametric profile definitions, but until recently implementation for some of them remained. All parametric profile definitions are now supported. Contrary to many other implementations of the IFC format, IfcOpenShell takes special care of correctly converting all fillet radii and leg slope attributes.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DPK1T_Q_hoc/U2j-Z-LLCpI/AAAAAAAAAIo/bZlo_pF2Gtw/s1600/profiles.png" height="144" width="320" /></div><br /><br /><b>NURBS</b><br />One of the promising additions that IFC4 brings to the table is the support for b-spline surfaces. With support for this elementary example of a twisted cube defined using IfcBSplineSurfaceWithKnots, provided by GeometryGym, the first baby steps towards IfcOpenShell as a IFC4 compliant geometry engine have been made.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wKRNOMPcs_c/U2j-jRX5aRI/AAAAAAAAAIs/ooSqAS8EXek/s1600/nurbs.png" height="315" width="320" /></div><br /><br /><b>Constructive Solid Geometry </b><br />IfcOpenShell now supports all CSG primitives and boolean operand connectives.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-128-2U2VTrY/U2kBw3AxrqI/AAAAAAAAAI8/pfLwANvKBho/s1600/csg.png" height="195" width="320" /></div><br /><br /><b>BIMserver Render Engine improvements</b><br />The BIMserver.org project reached an important milestone recently with its 1.3.0 release. IfcOpenShell contributed to this release by supplying a Render Engine that converts the IFC product representations into explicit triangular geometry. For example for use in their web-based viewer called BIMsurfer. In close collaboration with the BIMserver team we took special care of making sure that the engine is fault-tolerant and in the meantime took the time to implement initial support for surface styles and colors.<br /><br /><b>IfcOpenHouse</b><br />Apart from interpreting geometry, more and more so IfcOpenShell is stepping up to provide a framework for generating geometry as well. Recently the code to generate the IfcOpenHouse example, an IFC building model generated entirely from code, has been updated to conform a little bit better to the CoordinationView implementers agreements. You can read more on our struggle with actual parametric interoperability <a href="https://github.com/OpeningDesign/IFCopenHouse_Lantern_Hollow">here</a>.<br /><br /><b>FreeCAD</b><br />Read more about IfcOpenShell as an IFC creation framework in the <a href="http://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog.php?2014=37">recent blog post</a> by Yorik van Havre as he discusses the promising steps towards IFC support in FreeCAD.<br /><br />Be sure to check how your favorite IFC viewer compares to IfcOpenShell by looking at the sample files <a href="https://svn.code.sf.net/p/ifcopenshell/svn/trunk/test/input/">here</a> (just note that these developments are not yet part of the official built releases). Also note that some of these recent developments where funded by an generous external party and implemented by <a href="http://aecgeeks.com/">AECgeeks</a> a company founded by Thomas, one of the principle IfcOpenShell developers.thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-71727258939113369632014-02-07T09:00:00.000+01:002014-02-07T09:00:42.187+01:00Surface stylesSupport for IfcSurfaceStyles, when importing geometry from IFC files, is a feature that has been requested much over the years. Starting with IfcOpenShell 0.4 surface styles are supported. Some refer to these styles as materials, but within the realms of IFC, surface styles and materials are actually two different beasts. Materials (IfcMaterialDefinition) describe metadata that pertain to the physically built structure. For example: the composite structure of an insulated brick wall can be described using an IfcMaterialLayerSet.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mu54vPvjmfA/Usl2X5lw8VI/AAAAAAAAAE0/JtrtT0uq1ao/s1600/hitos_hvac.png" /></div><br />Surface styles on the other hand govern the way that surfaces or solids are visualised in IFC viewers. Often there is some correlation between the two: that the style of a surface is actually an indication of the material, but this is not necessarily the case. For example in MEP models, surface styles can also be used to colour code the contents or direction of flow segments, as can be seen above. In this post you find two images attached that derive their colouring straight from the IFC file: the Hitos HVAC model and an interior part of the Cobie Duplex Architectural model. In the image below you can also see how multiple distinct styles can be applied to different items within the same product.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a4dpLRCL9K4/UtEaqgaDL6I/AAAAAAAAAFg/nXn7SkhVA6s/s1600/cobie_duplex_architectural.jpg" /></div><br />Subsequent releases of IfcOpenShell will also account for surface styles linked to IfcMaterials and will provide an option to slice the geometric representation of elements according to their compound layer structure defined in the IfcMaterialLayerSet.thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-46333096664639768452014-01-12T12:00:00.000+01:002014-01-12T12:30:34.671+01:00IfcOpenShell 0.4.0 rc1 released!It has been a while, but today the immediate availability of the first release candidate for the IfcOpenShell 0.4 release is announced! On this blog some of the new features of this release will be highlighted in detail. For example on <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2014/01/converting-ifc-files-to-step-iges-and.html">file format conversion</a>. Please report all issues found <span style='font-size:80%'>(by leaving a comment, starting a thread on the forums, a message on IRC, e-mail or a letter, you know where to find us)</span>! <br /><br />Changes since 0.3:<br /><ul><li>Introduction of IfcConvert&nbsp; <ul style="list-style-type: none;"><li>A new utility that writes STEP, Collada, IGES and Wavefront OBJ files</li></ul></li><li>Support for IfcSurfaceStyles when importing geometry <ul style="list-style-type: none;"><li>Surface styles govern the colours applied to elements in IFC viewers</li></ul></li><li>More robust support for clipped representations</li><li>Blender IFC importer updated for 2.69</li><li>3ds Max IFC importer updated for 3ds Max 2014</li><li>Improved performance and stability</li></ul><br />The release can be downloaded from the <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org</a> website:<br /><ul><li>The IFC importer for <a href="http://blender.org/">Blender</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html</a></li><li>The IFC importer for Autodesk 3ds Max: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html</a></li><li>The stand-alone IFC geometry conversion utility: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcconvert.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcconvert.html</a></li><li>The plug-in for <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver.org</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html</a></li></ul><br />Enjoy! And remember that <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2011/08/ifcopenshell-needs-your-help.html">IfcOpenShell still needs your help</a>!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-41892337096689501672014-01-07T11:00:00.000+01:002014-01-07T11:24:37.064+01:00Converting IFC files to STEP, IGES and Collada filesOne of the brand new features in the upcoming IfcOpenShell 0.4 release is the ability to convert geometry in IFC files into <b>three new file formats </b>by using the new IfcConvert utility. The in total four supported output formats now are:<br /><ul><li>Wavefront OBJ (.obj)</li><li>Collada Digital Asset Exchange (.dae)</li><li>STEP (.stp)</li><li>IGES (.igs)</li></ul><div class="separator" style="float: right;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qz-KvCTQDBE/UshQLCH4o-I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/NBJabvOqLfU/s1600/mesh-beam.png" height="218" width="131" /><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w8PabVHcnCY/UshQLDGyxAI/AAAAAAAAAEM/51MA-vehRh0/s1600/step-beam.png" height="218" width="131" /></div>Wavefront OBJ conversion was already supported by the IfcObj utility. This utility is now obsolete. Both the Wavefront and Collada files, as created by IfcConvert, contain only tessellated geometry. More specifically: when using these formats all geometry is defined using explicit triangular polygons and curved surfaces would be approximated using these triangles. The great thing about these formats is that they can be imported by virtually any application, at the expense of some precision in the geometry definition.<br /><br />For example consider the following statement:<br /><div style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;,Courier,monospace;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="background-color: white;">#106</span></span> = <b>IFCISHAPEPROFILEDEF</b>(<span style="color: #999999;">.AREA.</span>, $, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#103</span>, 302., 1008., 21., 40., 30.); </div>This defines an I-beam profile cross-section with a 302mm width, 1008mm height, a thickness of 21mm for the web, 40mm for the flanges and a fillet radius of 30mm. The left-most image depicts how such a beam, with a single opening added, would be defined using triangles. Notice how the fillet radius where the web and the flanges meet is approximated using planar surfaces and the round opening is in fact an n-gon.<br /><br />Where STEP and IGES are different is that these formats allow the exporter to specify the surfaces using a boundary representation that supports curved surfaces and faces with holes. Therefore, no geometrical fidelity is lost in the conversion process. This can be useful in many of the engineering applications that do not natively support importing IFC files, but do provide support for either STEP or IGES files. After all, even though STEP and IFC(-SPF) share the same notation format (ISO 10303-21), STEP has been around for longer and is used in a variety of domains, where IFC is used only for describing building data. An illustration of the same beam without the triangular tessellation is provided on the right.<br /><br />Stay posted for the first Release Candidate of the new IfcOpenShell 0.4, to be made available soon, which includes this new utility!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-78641501710185807512013-02-11T14:00:00.000+01:002013-02-11T14:14:24.147+01:00IfcOpenShell 0.3.0 released!After another (rather lengthy) period of testing we proudly announce the immediate availability of IfcOpenShell 0.3.0, the latest stable release of this open source toolkit for working with IFC files.<br /><br />Meanwhile several interesting new features have already been developed in anticipation of the following release: Support for writing IFC files is especially something to look forward to given the powerful geometry back-end based on Open Cascade. Note that these features will not be available in the 0.3.0 release though.<br /><br />Thanks go out to everybody for reporting bugs and contributing to this release. Naturally this includes everybody using IfcOpenShell and those being involved in the discussion and adoption of IFC in the AEC industry as well.<br /><br /><h3><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Changes since 0.3.0-rc3</b></span></h3><i>Parsing and geometry</i><br /><ul><li>Potentially faster processing of files that can not be parsed sequentially, i.e. that require many random access operations throughout the file</li><li>Fixed a bug that caused IfcCircleHollowProfileDefs to be processed incorrectly</li><li>More robust processing of IfcCompositeCurves if no plane angle unit is provided in the file</li><li>More robust processing of IfcTrimmedCurves with tolerances on trimming by IfcCartesianPoint and, if possible, falling back to trimming by IfcParameterValue</li></ul><i>IfcBlender</i><br /><ul><li>Updated for Blender 2.65</li><li>Allow opening of non-latin filenames on Windows (other platforms already supported this)</li></ul><i>IfcObj</i><br /><ul><li>Use positive vertex indices for Wavefront OBJ files, which is more widely supported in importing applications</li></ul><i>IfcMax</i><br /><ul><li>Updated for Autodesk 3ds Max 2013</li><li>Allow opening of unicode filenames (only in 3ds Max 2013)</li></ul><i>BIMserver IfcEngine</i><br /><ul><li>No longer throws an exception if a building element's geometry is requested for an element that has not been processed by the IfcOpenShell binary</li></ul><br /><br />The release can be downloaded from the <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org</a> website:<br /><ul><li>The IFC importer for <a href="http://blender.org/">Blender</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html</a></li><li>The IFC importer for Autodesk 3ds Max: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html</a></li><li>The stand-alone IFC to Wavefront .OBJ converter: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html</a></li><li>The plug-in for <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver.org</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html</a></li></ul>Enjoy! And remember that <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2011/08/ifcopenshell-needs-your-help.html">IfcOpenShell still needs your help</a>!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-43462581183739218302012-11-04T17:30:00.000+01:002014-06-30T17:21:05.469+02:00Say Hi to IfcOpenHouse!Up until now, most people have been using IfcOpenShell to read and import IFC files, but today we bring you a three-dimensional IFC building model that is entirely generated from lines of code, using IfcOpenShell. With the use of some of the helper classes that IfcOpenShell provides, some might even say that creating IFC files this way is easier than operating a full-fledged BIM authoring tool, but that would we somewhat of an overstatement.<br /><br />IfcOpenHouse rests on a Nurbs-surface hilltop constructed in Open Cascade. The tight relation between IfcOpenShell and Open Cascade will in the future provide everything you need to write complex parametric shapes right to an IFC file. However, for now the surface had to be tessellated, as Ifc2x3 does not support Nurbs and IfcOpenShell is not yet smart enough to pick the correct way of representing arbitrary shapes from Open Cascade, therefore it resorts to a triangular surface model.<br /><br />For the other building elements IfcExtrudedAreaSolids are used, IfcBooleanClippingResults with IfcHalfSpaceSolids are used for the walls under the slanted roof and IfcOpeningElements are used for the boolean subtractions for windows and door. The hierarchical structure of an IfcProject, IfcSite, IfcBuilding and IfcBuildingStorey is created as well. This way a model is obtained that can be directly imported into your favourite three-dimensional modelling package.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vzHhYVeRk8I/UJZiJNfWjwI/AAAAAAAAABs/s5mJlKEWy0M/s1600/IfcOpenHouse.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vzHhYVeRk8I/UJZiJNfWjwI/AAAAAAAAABs/s5mJlKEWy0M/s1600/IfcOpenHouse.jpg" height="504" width="882" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>IfcOpenHouse rendered in Blender using IfcBlender, imported into Revit and opened in Solibri Model Viewer and Tekla BIMsight.&nbsp;</i></span><br /><br />If you know of an application that is unable to represent the generated model correctly, or have any other questions or remarks, drop us a line in the comments! You can download the generated IFC <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcopenhouse/v4/IfcOpenHouse.ifc">here</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>(updated June<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span>, 2014)</i></span>, and take a look at the source code for generating the file <a href="http://ifcopenshell.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ifcopenshell/trunk/src/examples/IfcOpenHouse.cpp?view=markup#l1">over here</a>.<br /><br /><b>Update November 10, 2012 </b>IfcOpenHouse has been updated to import correctly into Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture 2013.thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-46640948834203665062012-04-08T18:00:00.000+02:002012-04-08T18:47:52.327+02:00IfcOpenShell.org 0.3.0 rc3 released!With pleasure the third release candidate of IfcOpenShell.org 0.3.0 has been released. If no new major show-stoppers are encountered this release will become the official 0.3.0 version after a period of testing.<br /><br /><b>Since the previous release candidate several issues have been addressed</b><br /><ul><li>The clipping of building elements&nbsp;behaves much better now, especially if a polygonal boundary of the clipping volume coincides with faces of the first operand solid.</li><li>Bugs have been fixed in the processing of mapped representations, trimmed curves and connected faces sets.</li><li>IfcBlender has been updated for compatibility with Blender 2.62. Furthermore, hidden elements in the 3d View are now hidden in the Render as well.</li><li>IfcOpenShell now warns if entities with the same GlobalId or id are encountered.</li><li>A major performance issue has been&nbsp;addressed&nbsp;by only sewing faces of IfcConnectedFaceSets when they are needed for&nbsp;Boolean&nbsp;operations.</li><li>We now have <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2012/03/visual-test-cases-added-to-ifcopenshell.html">automated visual test cases</a>!</li></ul>Very interesting for us to witness has been the <a href="http://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog.php?2012=17">development</a> of the IFC importer for <a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page">FreeCAD</a> that uses IfcOpenShell as a fall-back for their customly developed importer. Because both FreeCAD and IfcOpenShell are based on Open Cascade the level of integration between FreeCAD and IfcOpenShell could be much deeper than it is currently the case with the importers for 3ds Max and Blender!<br /><br />Furthermore we would like to congratulate the talented <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver</a> team with their <a href="http://bimserver.org/2012/03/30/first-release-candidate-for-version-1-1/">upcoming 1.1 release</a>. It is a pleasure working with you to provide an open source IFC geometry engine for the BIMserver. <span class="st">I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.</span> <br /><br />The release can be downloaded from the <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org</a> website:<br /><ul><li>The IFC importer for <a href="http://blender.org/">Blender</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html</a></li><li>The IFC importer for Autodesk 3ds Max: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html</a></li><li>The stand-alone IFC to Wavefront .OBJ converter: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html</a></li><li>The plug-in for <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver.org</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html</a></li></ul>Enjoy! And remember that <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2011/08/ifcopenshell-needs-your-help.html">IfcOpenShell still needs your help</a>!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-6834906306616527862012-03-01T23:19:00.000+01:002012-04-07T17:44:35.181+02:00Visual test cases added to IfcOpenShellTo spice things up for the upcoming 0.3 release of IfcOpenShell, I have just <a href="http://ifcopenshell.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ifcopenshell/test/">committed</a> a test suite to the repository. The tests use <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">Blender</a> to automatically render images of whatever IFC files I could find on the Internet. A selection of these cases you see parading in the image below. Truth be told, these are the ones that behave nicely with IfcOpenShell. Luckily, by now this holds for a rather large majority, but there are still some quirks that need to be addressed before the 0.3 release.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ug6iDFvfoDw/T4Bd7qMjawI/AAAAAAAAABk/u6rjmrXIM8A/s1600/ifcopenshell_testcases_collage2.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="504" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ug6iDFvfoDw/T4Bd7qMjawI/AAAAAAAAABk/u6rjmrXIM8A/s1600/ifcopenshell_testcases_collage2.png" width="882" /></a></div><br />We are very grateful for the models hosted on-line by the following parties: <br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.kit.edu/english/">Karlsruher Institut für Technologie </a> / <a href="http://www.dds.no/">Data Design System </a> / <a href="http://www.vectorworks.net/">Nemetschek Vectorworks</a> / <a href="http://openifcmodel.cs.auckland.ac.nz/">Open IFC Model Repository</a> / <a href="http://bimserver.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/TestData/data/">BIMserver.org</a> / <a href="http://buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/projects/commonbimfiles/">buildingSMART alliance</a></span><br />Special thanks go out to Ryan Schultz (<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://studiowikitecture.com/">studiowikitecture.com</a>, <a href="http://www.openingdesign.com/">openingdesign.com</a></span>) and Jon Mirtschin (<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.geometrygym.com/">geometrygym.com</a></span>) for kindly including their models in our test case suite.<br /><br />If you have some IFC models laying around that you would like to donate for inclusion in the test suite, you can send them to <a href="mailto:models@ifcopenshell.org">models@ifcopenshell.org</a>. There is some benefit in doing this for you too: we will do our very best the files submitted to us are always rendered correctly.<br /><br />Stay posted for the 0.3 release of IfcOpenShell. Among other things it will feature quite a nice increase in performance!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-74870678769131909812011-12-03T12:00:00.000+01:002011-12-03T12:56:51.998+01:00IfcOpenShell.org 0.3.0 rc1 released!With pleasure the first release candidate of IfcOpenShell.org 0.3.0 has been released. If no new major show-stoppers are encountered this release will become the official 0.3.0 version after a period of testing. The focus for this release has been to improve the stability of IfcOpenShell and improve the handling of IFC files coming from a wide variety of sources. <br /><br /><b>IfcOpenShell has become much more stable</b><br /><ul><li>A lot of reasons for IfcOpenShell to crash on certain IFC files have been addressed, for example when encountering invalid enumaration values or when unit of measure information cannot be found</li></ul><b>IfcOpenShell now understands a lot more entities</b><br /><ul><li>Support for IfcMappedItems and IfcCartesianTransformationOperator3D(nonUniform) has been brought up to par </li><li>Support for IfcOpeningElements of IfcBuildingElementParts which are decompositions of IfcElements</li><li>Support for IFC files coming from AutoCAD Architecture has been improved by supporting IfcShapeRepresentations linked to IfcProducts via an IfcProductRepresentation instead of an IfcProductDefinitionShape</li></ul><b>Some additional features in IfcOpenShell</b><br /><ul><li>The Blender addon has recieved much attention and is now able to convert the hierarchical structure of IFC files into parenting relations in Blender</li><li>Support for normal smoothing of curved surfaces in IfcObj</li><li>Parsing and geometry extraction has sped up tremendously in some cases</li></ul><br />Very exciting news is the work that has been done on a plug-in for the open source <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver.org</a> to provide them an open source IFC geometry engine, it may take some time for this to be readily available, but the first results are promissing.<br /><br />Note that this is first release for which Linux and Mac OSX builds are supplied. This is all rather new for us, we are still mapping on what platforms they actually do work, so if you encounter any problems with them (or just want to say they do work) please mail to <a href="mailto:support@ifcopenshell.org">support@ifcopenshell.org</a>, drop by at our <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/ifcopenshell/forums">forums</a> or let us know in the comments.<br /><br />The release can be downloaded from the <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org</a> website:<br /><ul><li>The IFC importer for <a href="http://blender.org/">Blender</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcblender.html</a></li><li>The IFC importer for Autodesk 3ds Max: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcmax.html</a></li><li>The stand-alone IFC to Wavefront .OBJ converter: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcobj.html</a></li><li>The plug-in for <a href="http://bimserver.org/">BIMserver.org</a>: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/bimserver.html</a></li></ul><br />Enjoy! And remember that <a href="http://blog.ifcopenshell.org/2011/08/ifcopenshell-needs-your-help.html">IfcOpenShell still needs your help</a>!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-49076576978221454782011-10-18T11:33:00.000+02:002011-10-18T11:33:55.272+02:00Realistic architectural visualizations using IfcOpenShell and free open source softwareFrom time to time we get reports of people using <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">IfcOpenShell</a> to create visualizations of their architectural <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Foundation_Classes">IFC</a> models. I figured it was about time to take IfcOpenShell for test drive myself and see how it performs for creating architectural visualizations. I used the build of IfcBlender that is available on <a href="http://www.graphicall.org/aothms">GraphicAll</a> and imported <a href="http://www.iai.fzk.de/www-extern/index.php?id=1583">this IFC file</a>. A lot of sample IFC files are not that detailed to create interesting interior visualizations, but the FZK haus from <a href="http://www.elitecad.ch/produkte/ar/gruende-fuer-elitecad-ar/">EliteCAD</a> is an exception and has quite a detailed interior. <a href="http://www.blender.org/">Blender</a> has been used to quickly slap some materials onto the model, other than that no real adjustments have been made. The model has been rendered in <a href="http://www.luxrender.net/">LuxRender</a>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uiMnqJCnGB0/Tp07gEvzPBI/AAAAAAAAAA4/SH3GTD2upi0/s1600/FZKhaus.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img alt="FZK haus EliteCAD" border="0" height="551" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uiMnqJCnGB0/Tp07gEvzPBI/AAAAAAAAAA4/SH3GTD2upi0/s882/FZKhaus.jpg" width="882" /></a></div><br /><br />What has been discovered after taking IfcOpenShell for a test drive:<br /><ul><li>IfcOpenShell is making some great progress and is able to import the vast majority of the geometry successfully<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup> 1</sup></span></li><li>UV coordinates are generally not present in IFC files, making them perfect for the use of procedural materials</li><li>The fact that only blank materials are assigned in IfcBlender is not such a problem since one would probably have to redefine them anyway for the rendering engine</li><li>The fact that there is no normal smoothing for curved surfaces is quite appearant and has priority to be fixed</li><li>Often objects contain multiple parts, these parts should be preserved to make assigning different materials to different subsets of the meshes easier<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup> 2</sup></span></li><li><a href="http://buildingsmart-tech.org/ifc/IFC2x3/TC1/html/ifcgeometryresource/lexical/ifcmappeditem.htm">Mapped representations</a> should result in instanced geometry to reduce memory usage and limit manual work involved in finetuning the meshes<span style="font-size: x-small;"><sup> 2</sup></span></li></ul><br />I would love to hear your comments and hear how IfcOpenShell fits into your workflow.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><sup>1</sup></span> If you want to get an idea of the progress IfcOpenShell is making, compare this <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/img/FZKhaus-wireframe.png">wireframe view</a> of the FZK haus to an <a href="http://www.tuimg.com/images/fzkhauseli.png">import</a> done only a month ago by <a href="http://www.bitacoravirtual.cl/">Rafael Moya</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><sup>2</sup></span> For example consider the following representation (with apologies for the IFC lingo):</span><br /><blockquote><div style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;,Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">#100</span> =<b> IFCSHAPEREPRESENTATION</b>(<span style="color: #cc0000;">#13</span>, <span style="color: #999999;">'Body'</span>, <span style="color: #999999;">'MappedRepresentation'</span>, (<span style="color: #cc0000;">#101</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#102</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#103</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#104</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#105</span>));</span></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;,Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">#101</span> =<b> IFCMAPPEDITEM</b>(<span style="color: #cc0000;">#106</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#107</span>);</span></div><div style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;,Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">#106</span> = <b>IFCREPRESENTATIONMAP</b>(<span style="color: #cc0000;">#108</span>, <span style="color: #cc0000;">#109</span>);</span></div></blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">At this moment this results in one mesh with id #100. An alternative would be to mesh the five representations that are referenced by #90-#94 [indeed, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">one of them is</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> #109] seperately and share them amongst the objects that reference them.</span>thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-87225772178918900302011-08-23T08:49:00.002+02:002016-10-24T10:48:29.551+02:00IfcOpenShell needs your help!Building Information Modeling is about collaboration, Open Source Software is about collaboration. This makes IfcOpenShell, being open source BIM software, about collaboration<sup>2</sup> (I'm no math genius though, there might be an error somewhere in this equation). Therefore IfcOpenShell needs your help, this blog post is about what can you do to help improve IfcOpenShell, the open source IFC implementation.<br /><br /><b>Write code</b><br />The <a href="https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/issues">issue tracker</a> is running over with interesting things to develop, but feel free to come up with and implement your own ideas. There's stuff for everyone, whether you are a python hacker or a C++ hacker. Contributions can be submitted as Pull Requests on our <a href="https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/pulls">github page</a>.<br /><br /><b>Create IFC files</b><br />Preferably these are isolated test cases of things that either work or do not work in IfcOpenShell. If they do not work, please be so kind to upload them to the <a href="https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/issues">issue tracker</a> and state what you'd expect to see and what you witnessed instead.<br /><br /><b>Add feature requests and submit bugs</b><br />Feature requests are to be posted in the <a href="https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/issues">issue tracker</a> as well, handle with care though, as the most interesting ones might take some time to be implemented due to understaffing.<br /><br /><b>Write documentation</b><br />Like every other open source project our <a href="https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/wiki">wiki</a> is rather empty. Let me know if you want to do something about it.<b>&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><b>Build binaries</b><br />IfcOpenShell can be used on a lot of different platforms and operating systems, but currently builds are not frequently released on the website. With your help we can provide up to date binaries on our website for your favorite operating system. <br /><br /><b>Discuss</b><br />Come join us at the newly opened <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/ifcopenshell/forums/forum/1782718">developers forum</a>, where features, bugs and everything related to IFC and the building and construction industry in general can be discussed.<br /><br /><b>Provide a financial incentive</b><br />This last one is rather tricky, but of course, might you feel like it, there is the possibility to <a href="https://sourceforge.net/project/project_donations.php?group_id=543113">make a donation</a> in order to urge us to develop faster, better and nicer features. But honestly, a small donation of your time to do one of the above would be appreciated even more.<br /><br /><br />Thomas<br />IfcOpenShell admin<br /><a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org</a>thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-92161220111995436942011-07-28T19:32:00.004+02:002011-07-31T11:21:03.652+02:00IFC EXPRESS schema definitionsAs you might have heard, IFC files are based on a schema that defines the things that may exist inside an IFC file and how they relate to each other. In order to get up and running quickly, till now IfcOpenShell used a more or less schema-less approach, but from this joyous day on will parse IFC files using the schema definitions provided by buildingSMART. This means we now have the entire inheritance graph at our disposal, which surely might come in handy someday. In plain English this would translate to knowing that an IfcWallStandardCase is a subtype of an IfcWall, which is a special kind of building element, etc.<br /><br />To be able to generate the required C++ code from the Express schema, I have written some code in Python using Parser combinators, provided by the funcparserlib Python library. Combinatory parsing is an elegant method that combines elementary parsing routines into the complex framework required to parse these kind of files. Unfortunately the code ended up to be less elegant than what was hoped for, but it works for now. Although rules, functions and where clauses are discarded for now. Take a peek at the Python source over here: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ifcopenshell/src/ifcexpressparser/IfcExpressParser.py?view=markup">http://ifcopenshell.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ifcopenshell/src/ifcexpressparser/IfcExpressParser.py?view=markup</a><br /><br />Readers of this blog who feel shocked that adding 20.000 lines of generated C++ code to the project has added virtually no additional functionality might find consolation in the fact that it becomes easier now to add new functionality to IfcOpenShell. You go ahead and try for yourself if you don't believe me!<br /><br />By the way, if you want to generate your own C++ code from the Express schema, you can grab your copy of the Industry Foundation Classes longform EXPRESS schema version 2x3 <span class="description">Technical Corrigendum 1, or </span><span class="description">IFC2x3_TC1.exp for short, at the </span>buildingSMART tech site at: <a href="http://buildingsmart-tech.org/downloads/ifc/ifc2x3tc">http://buildingsmart-tech.org/downloads/ifc/ifc2x3tc</a>thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-39730013823468369192011-07-11T11:39:00.000+02:002011-07-13T11:21:20.427+02:00IfcOpenShell 0.2.0 released!I am pleased to announce that a new version of IfcOpenShell has been released.<br /><br />Some random notes taken from the changelog:<br /><ul><li>Support for more profile shapes (e.g. IfcCircleProfileDef, IfcCircleHollowProfileDef, IfcIShapeProfileDef, IfcCShapeProfileDef) and curves (e.g. IfcCompositeCurve, IfcTrimmedCurve)</li><li>Updated IfcBlender for version 2.58 and 2.58a</li><li>Lazy loading of IFC files; faster parsing and less memory usage</li><li>Various fixes and improvements</li></ul>More info and downloads at: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org/</a><br />Get the source code from: <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/code.html">http://ifcopenshell.org/code.html</a>thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-76417902117595000252011-07-09T21:00:00.000+02:002011-07-10T16:19:31.172+02:00Static linking of Open CASCADE librariesFor building the windows binaries I have recently switched over to the Open CASCADE Community Edition, located at github: <a href="https://github.com/tpaviot/oce">https://github.com/tpaviot/oce</a>. Among other improvements, it provides a CMake makefile that allows for easy switching between shared and static libraries.<br /><br />Static linking has several advantages over dynamic linking. Static linking removes the dependency on other files from the executable, increasing its file size, but simplifying the distribution and removing the possibility of conflicts between versions of the library. Static linking might also slightly improve the performance and reduce the memory usage because only the functionality that is actually needed is loaded, whereas previously the entire shared library had to be loaded into memory.<br /><br />Because of this switch, IfcObj and IfcMax now require no additional files, IfcBlender still requires several. As a result of this, the binaries will no longer be distributed inside an installer, but will be provided as a regular zip-file.<br /><br />Stay posted for the release of IfcOpenShell 0.2.0 this week!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792504135258878475.post-30936114791619349262011-06-01T21:00:00.000+02:002011-07-10T15:35:40.812+02:00IfcOpenShell is online!Hey there and welcome to the IfcOpenShell blog.<br /><br />IfcOpenShell is an open source implementation of the IFC standard that is geared towards extracting the geometry defined in IFC files. Support for creating and modifying IFC files will be provided in the future. IfcOpenShell is based on proven open source technology from the nice folks over at Open CASCADE, accelerating the development of IfcOpenShell to quickly reach production quality.<br /><br />The heart of IfcOpenShell is the library of functions to interact with IFC files. Around this library an application and two plug-ins are built to provide IFC support for other applications.<br /><br />Without further ado, please visit <a href="http://ifcopenshell.org/">http://ifcopenshell.org/</a> for more information!thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02091082558478878837noreply@blogger.com0